MTG Salvation

I was just looking at The Gitrog Monster and it is definitely an auto-include. That along with Crucible of Worlds is just going to be ridiculous.

Desolation and Contamination may seem OK but I don't think they could work in my build. The deck needs to be able to provide G for the instants that protect my creaturs from boardwipes so Contamination is out. Desolation is just too slow. Thanks for the suggestions though!

Keep an eye out for when the spoilers are finally concluded. I may even have enough time between then to start preparing this thread in Primer fashion so let's see what happens. I'm currently on vacation in Ontario so I haven't been able to do anything MtG related for the past week (and won't be able to this upcoming week).

Okay, so Shadows Over Innistrad cards that have really interested me for testing with Mazirek have been:

• Relentless Dead
  
• Ulvenwald Mysteries
  
• The Gitrog Monster
  
• Tamiyo's Journal
  
• Westvale Abbey

Relentless Dead can be sacrificed and return to my hand for B for continued use. However, it may be an inefficient way to have a sacrifice outlet.
Ulvenwald Mysteries nets me an egg each time a non-token creature I control dies, which is awesome. On top of that, whenever I do sacrifice a Clue, I get a creature token. Joy!
The Gitrog Monster was utterly jaw-dropping. A sacrifice outlet each turn? Check! Able to play one more land per turn? Check! Makes all my lands into potential eggs? Check! A beefy body with with deathtouch? Check! Is it already in the deck? You betcha!
Tamiyo's Journal: I'm considering swapping this for Mycoloth for the simple fact that, though Mycoloth provides some insane sacrifice outlet as well as tokens, it never lasts more than one turn on the field. So I'd rather have an egg maker that costs the same.
Westvale Abbey is quite the sacrifice outlet! I sacrifice 5 creatures (tokens, mostly) and then it becomes this gruesome beater that has one of the best combinations of abilities. And even before I transform it into Ormendahl, Profane Prince, it's a land that provides mana without cipt. Delectable!

I really like all the possibilities that Shadows Over Innistrad has provided Mazirek with. I've already seen lots of people brewing with The Gitrog Monster as another solid Golgari egg-style general. When I get around to making this [Primer]-worthy, I have to definitely discuss that guy as a possible general. Anywho, on with the potential changes that I will be testing:

I still have to find space for Ulvenwald Mysteries since it provides Clue and Human Soldier tokens. Though it's not super essential to swap right now ('cause I know that the changes I made so far are already reaping benefits) I would still like to test Ulvenwald Mysteries.

Ok, so I've been testing extensively and the subtle changes have been amazing. Something else that I found when testing was that the smaller the group (3DH and 2-headed giant), the less effective cards like Pox and Death Cloud would preform. Most of the time they would just lie in my hand because I had the better board state and casting them would only hurt me. What I have found is that this deck is only as efficient as the number of players in the game. So I'm basically gonna have to go with 2 different builds if I wanna really be thorough: small pods and larger pods (4 player free-for-all, 5point star, 6 players, etc.) in such a way that you'd just have to switch some cards and that'd be it. So you'd have a swap board dependent on the numbers of players and the configuration.

Additionally, I plan on building (already started to) a budget version of the deck because even though the fetchlands have been amazing here, a lot of people (especially very casual players) won't be able to put all the fetches that are in here (as well as Bayou) so I'll probably post that soon. Also, I'm waiting until people start netdecking the top decks so that cards like The Gitrog Monster and Westvale Abbey drop in price. How is Westvale Abbey $20??? I so don't see that being abused in Standard. I mean, it's more expensive than Jace, who's mythic. At least Tamiyo's Journal is under $1. What has me bummed is how expensive Crucible of Worlds is. That card has become too broken for the deck and it won't go down in price anytime soon. Why wasn't it reprinted in Modern Masters 2 along with the fetchlands??????

So I know I brought it up months ago but I've finally gotten time to fix up decks. Maz is next and I still wanna keep the artifact build. Investigate has won me back over, specfically Ulvenwald Mysteries and Tireless Tracker. The former can do a ton of neat things and the latter offers +1/+1 token synergy, which may just be cool.

Since you're going more artifacts than anything else, those two cards go exceedingly well together (along with the rest of the sacrifice shenanigans). Have you also added Tamiyo's Journal? Do you run Disciple of the Vault as well?

Hey DK, how did Ulvenwald Mysteries and the other SOI includes end up testing for you? Did you ever try Tireless Tracker?

I haven't tried them in this deck but I have tried them in other decks I have and they have been amazing. Investigate is definitely a great casual mechanic. I'm still looking for how to make this deck more efficient. I'm gonna end up removing the eggs because I feel that I'm having a lot of sac triggers yet not enough creatures to abuse for the +1/+1 counters. So I still have to find that sweet spot. However, I'm leaning towards definitely testing them in the deck. I also want to try to go more tokens also.

So I'm considering having a whole bunch of token production (Clues being the eggs of the deck - albeit more expensive to take advantage of and they consume mana). But that'll just make the deck more mana hungry like it was before. I'll probably then end up adding ramp for Cabal Coffers, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, and Gaea's Cradle. The deck was always going to be mid-range aggro but I want it to be faster than most midrange decks. In either case, I'll probably make a couple of different lists with Mazirek like I did with my Sidisi primer just for people with different metas or for when you want to mix it up with Mazirek and not get bored of the deck (and also keep your opponents on your toes).

scapeshift and Squandered Resources are other tricks to sacrifice all of your land's.

I actually considered and tested them both. They're both great but the deck doesn't have many ways to recover so many lands sacrificed. I feel that they're better used in a Kermit Druid deck.

Other than infinite combos, how are you getting enough triggers from the cards that require non-token creatures to be sacrificed?

Yeah, I'm still trying to find the perfect balance with the deck. I can always sac mana dorks mid-late game and then recover them through recursion or reanimation. I've been testing a lot with a lot of different cards and still quite haven't found the sweet spot between things to sac and advantages of sacrificing them. Here's the list I'm currently testing:


As for non-token creatures dying to trigger cards like Harvester of Souls, it triggers when my opponents' creatures die as well, not just my own.

Hey DK, love your work (your competitive Sidisi list is very fun). Here is my Mazirek list I threw together: Decklist

Tireless Tracker gets abusive so fast in this deck. I've had good luck too with Cryptolith Rite, especially using spawn tokens as mana dorks and then sac'ing them. I'm running less of the eggs but definitely trying to max out on edict effects. Black Market and Carpet of Flowers have been helpful to get some big mana advantage too.

Quote from FiddlerTheDrum »

Hey DK, love your work (your competitive Sidisi list is very fun). Here is my Mazirek list I threw together: Decklist

Tireless Tracker gets abusive so fast in this deck. I've had good luck too with Cryptolith Rite, especially using spawn tokens as mana dorks and then sac'ing them. I'm running less of the eggs but definitely trying to max out on edict effects. Black Market and Carpet of Flowers have been helpful to get some big mana advantage too.

Thanks!

I can more or less tell the overall strategy of your deck. I'm guessing that some cards are meta choices like Carpet of Flowers? How do you pilot your build? Any particular strategies or plays you tend to go for? Or is it as straightforward as sacrifice, pump, attack?

Pretty straight forward, I haven't played it too much yet, but it was inspired by a friend's deck from a few months ago. I've added in some combos because, well, I can't resist. As far as carpet of flowers, I play online so I see a vast variety of decks, but you can usually count on some blue dudes

How about Sylvan Safekeeper as a way to protect Mazirek that also happens to be a sac outlet? Now that I think of it, there are several cheap protective spells that involve sacrifice:

• Carapace
• Dark Privilege
• Fortitude
• Thrull Retainer

Damn, Hunding Gjornersen! Bonus points for those trips down memory lane! Managing to be able to even suggest a card from Homelands is quite the feat! I've been playing for so long that I actually have all those cards in some box stored away beneath a billion other things, lol!

I've been considering Sylvan Safekeeper for a while now since it can give shroud to any creature with a built-in and free sac outlet. The other I would consider testing would be Dark Privilege. But damn if I wouldn't add Carapace and/or Thrull Retainer! Thrulls really need a comeback!

I could probably add Sylvan Safekeeper if I also re-add Crucible of Worlds. That way the fetchlands are at least useful sacrifices for when they don't produce and land for want of having Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in play.

I'm going to probably do like I did with my Sidisi primer and devote this thread to the 2 different ways I have of playing Mazirek: creatures matter vs. artifacts matter. I have not yet been able to totally break Mazirek and as I've been playing I've found both routes to be practically equivalent. So they're basically meta dependent. One generates lots of creatures the other card advantage. One has fewer creatures but at a much larger scale and the other has more creatures that aren't as large.

I think that overall these two deck types with Mazirek will ultimately depend on a player's style and what they prefer to play. I'm going to always work on them both and just decided to devote each deck to one play style. That way I won't be divided by what to change and what to add. I guess I've finally found the equilibrium in it. If I keep changing it back and forth then there's really no more advantage from either change beyond pod quality and luck. The good thing about Mazirek is that if your playgroup is casual, it's very easy to build a Budget version. I'll probably just devote any further energies into progressing a solid budget build for Mazirek. I was able to keep my Sidisi Primer Budget Build at about $55 (currently) and it's still quite fun and awesome to play with in a casual and/or budget setting. I will try to do the same with Mazirek. I will try and build a version at around $50 for it as well. Prices have fluctuated some so the Sidisi Budget build is currently $5 over my goal of keeping it capped off at $50, but I think that +/- $5 is a good threshold interval for it. I'm gonna try and do the same for Mazirek. Hopefully I will be able to design this thread in Primer fashion during the upcoming summer months. Stay tuned! I also want to work on making my Polukranos thread into a Primer as well. That general is completely underrated. You guys have no idea!

---

EDIT:

Quote from Hunding Gjornersen »

How about Sylvan Safekeeper as a way to protect Mazirek that also happens to be a sac outlet? Now that I think of it, there are several cheap protective spells that involve sacrifice:

• Carapace
• Dark Privilege
• Fortitude
• Thrull Retainer

Hunding Gjornersen, your blast from the past throwback has inspired this budget build. Thanks to you I was able to muster up the courage to keep it real and keep it old school with this hyper budget build. Anyone can play this brutal yet casual build with budget pods for approximately $25. That's right, you all read correctly, TWENTY. FIVE. DOLLARS. Enjoy!

Alright, as previously stated, I decided to just devote an entire deck to each type of stax strategy: creatures matter and artifacts matter. The previous post has a hyper budget build. Hopefully, I will soon be able to edit the OP with all three decks and in detail discussion about them. In the mean time, here're the new decklists:

I'll come back with some cool ideas for the artifact build...but until then, I know I've mentioned Living Plane before, but I think it should be an auto-include with him. We run enough regenerate to play through boardwipes if someone so chooses to try that, but most times people will just wait to remove the enchantment. It offers a sort of stax-ish element which helps since we get a lot of mana from non-land permanents. Our lands grow insanely powerful so that even Noyan Dar would admit it was impressive. Add in Massacre Wurm if you like that option. From all the builds I tried, its presence alone would dictate how the game was carried out. I think I even used the green side of Life/Death once to make them creatures again after the enchantment was removed and had an alpha strike big enough to wipe the table.

Yes, the living lands concept was mentioned before and I haven't really considered it too much; I guess my worry is consistency. Living Plane + Massacre Wurm just equals a one-sided mass land destruction - which a lot of people look down upon. Though having Living Plane on its own can be interesting since my lands will also be getting pumped as Mazirek is distributing +1/+1 counters left and right. However, if I want to put pressure and have an opponent sacrifice their only creature in play - maybe an Avacyn, Angel of Hope or Geist of Saint Traft or Uril, the Miststalker - they'd just be able to sacrifice a land and not have to think twice about it. That's my only qualm about it.

Quote from Welgo »

I'll come back with some cool ideas for the artifact build...but until then, I know I've mentioned Living Plane before, but I think it should be an auto-include with him. We run enough regenerate to play through boardwipes if someone so chooses to try that, but most times people will just wait to remove the enchantment. It offers a sort of stax-ish element which helps since we get a lot of mana from non-land permanents. Our lands grow insanely powerful so that even Noyan Dar would admit it was impressive. Add in Massacre Wurm if you like that option. From all the builds I tried, its presence alone would dictate how the game was carried out. I think I even used the green side of Life/Death once to make them creatures again after the enchantment was removed and had an alpha strike big enough to wipe the table.

And yes, I would like to hear some cool ideas for the artifact build!

Quote from DementedKirby »

Damn, Hunding Gjornersen! Bonus points for those trips down memory lane! Managing to be able to even suggest a card from Homelands is quite the feat!

Heh, I'm glad you enjoyed that. Carapace and Thrull Retainer are sort of the original totem armors.

Quote from DementedKirby »

And yes, I would like to hear some cool ideas for the artifact build!

It seems like Urza's and Mishra's Baubles, and even Lodestone Bauble would be really strong here. Also, Prismatic Lens and especially Fractured Powerstone are odd choices in a GB deck. Wayfarer's Bauble is better than either of them. Solemn Simulacrum and Burnished Hart both fit well, too. Finally, the artifact deck should have Phyrexia's Core.

The mana rocks are for lack of mana dorks. I tested the 0-cost baubles but I found them lackluster. Then again that was me trying to find a balance between creatures and artifacts. Maybe in an artifact-heavy build they could be of some use... I could try to see what to cut for them. Too many artifacts and there wouldn't be too many creatures to get the +1/+1 counters, lol. I would add Expedition Map over Wayfarer's Bauble. The deck runs too few basics for it to be worth while but Expedition Map is a whole other story.

As for the mana rocks, the deck doesn't have any mana dorks so I need mana rocks for an easier to cast Mazirek. The is fine since Mazirek costs 3BG. As long as I have a B and G source, the generic mana can be paid with .

Solemn Simulacrum and Burnished Hart would be good for testing. But I run so few basics and all possible fetches so I'm not too inclined to try them out. Phyrexia's Core I don't include because almost all of the artifacts sacrifice themselves anyways. I don't need a two-land investment just to sac an artifact and gain 1 life.

---

Alright, I made some subtle changes to the deck. Here's the new artifact version I'm going to be testing:


I'll try and post my findings on testing soon.

Eldritch Moon has provided some great cards to consider for Mazirek. It's been a while since I've posted anything but I'm currently working on trying to make my post more primer in appearance. What has particularly caught my eye from Eldritch Moon is Splendid Reclamation. When combined with Scapeshift and The Gitrog Monster, Splendid Reclamation would make the amount of sacrifices be exceedingly broken. This is something that I would like to test. It's been very hard finding slots for the deck since there are so many cards that work well with Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest, which is why I've made 3 builds to it.

Splendid Reclamation seems solid in a Pox build